with a smile
by i AM the Random Idiot
Summary: what mask will you wear today? black angel or white demon? : the killer in me is the killer in you. send this smile over to you.


**with a smile**

what mask will you wear today? black angel or white demon : the killer in me is the killer in you. send this smile over to you.

(a/n) god damn you bastards, fanfiction dot net. I want my bracketed summaries and I want them back this minute. inspired by "disarm," by the smashing pumpkins. and points to whoever can spot the tiny reference to another bleach one-shot by moi. opening and closing quotes come from volume three of the bleach manga, as translated by viz.

(disc.) bleach owned by viz and tite kubo.

x...x...x

_...when was it that he stopped smiling...?_

People used to be scared of you for no reason. They'd see your face—bunched eyebrows, dispassionate scowl, and punkish flaming hair—and keep walking, sensing the strong vibes of _don't-mess-with-me_ you exude at an almost unconscious level. You never minded so much. It was almost like you had your own people filter, since the people who could see past the angry mask to the person you are beneath were probably the only people you'd want to hang out with anyway. Tatsuki, Chad, Mizuiro, Keigo, Orihime most recently—hell, even Ishida, to a certain extent—they're your friends. You'd do anything for them.

Remember?

You promised yourself something a long time ago. You promised yourself the day you woke up soaked in rain and your mother's blood that you'd protect them. Your friends and family—you'd protect them until you die.

Of course you remember.

You've thought about it a lot lately.

Because now they have a real reason to be scared of you.

You may have stopped smiling a long time ago, but now someone—some**thing**—inside of you has started. Deep down, a grinning madness has taken form and begun to stalk the recesses of your soul, and if you don't keep your distance from your loved ones, they might catch a glimpse of his face through your own. They might look into your eyes and see only a desolate cityscape ravaged by soulfire and bloody rain, haunted by pure white specters of pure black insanity and mothers with gentle smiles and empty eyes and bloody gaping holes in their chests, through which one might catch a glimpse of the darkening sky.

You wouldn't wish such a sight on your worst enemy.

Logically, you know the other one hasn't been there long—can it really only be a month or so ago that you descended into your own personal hell to gain the strength to save her?—but intuitively, it feels longer. He might have been there since that rainy day in June. When you came to slowly, lying on your back with your mother's face inches from your own. When you, disoriented and confused, smiled before trying to ask what was wrong, before looking into her eyes and seeing nothing there.

When you sat up and her body slid from your own, and her blood was all over you, mixing with the falling rain.

When your smile froze and your face locked and your mind reeled, maybe a part of your soul froze, too—still stuck in that painful rictus of a smile, thinking, knowing, _If I smile, I'm happy. If I'm happy, that means she's not dead. _

Maybe that nine-year-old child you once were actually did go insane that day—cracked and split along the dichotomous line between laughing and crying, smiling and screaming, while you held your mother's body and stared at the road for hours before someone found you.

The little insane child inside of you has grown up, it seems. Grown, perhaps, into this new sneering demon. Black eyes and white mask. Hide your face so the world will never find you. Disarm them with a smile.

You've never really belonged anywhere, have you? As a human, you were haunted by visions from the other side. As a _ryoka_, you were an outsider, an intruder, the one who barged in and set their world on its side to match your own. As a _shinigami_, you're somewhat of a freak—a human, not even a _full-grown_ human, who fights at the level of captains? To them you're an aberration, a monster. Whether they know how apt such a view is remains uncertain.

It's uncomfortable having a foot planted in each world, isn't it?

But now it's your choice. What world, Ichigo? And what face will you show that world? What mask will you wear today? Black angel or white demon? Or maybe just the one that says you don't care? The one you're hiding, or the one you've been hiding behind? It's comedy or tragedy, and hell if you can tell which is which.

Can you do it alone?

Maybe. Maybe not.

That's why you have friends, isn't it? The ones that see you when you don't even remember what your true face looks like anymore. Do you think they can't tell when you're bleeding inside? Do you think your laughter or your pain goes unnoticed? They'd share the burden if they could. If you'd let them.

But you won't, because that's just how you are.

You want to protect them from the darkness, from the fear, from the sleepless nights. They're the reason you fight, and the reason you _have_ a reason. Call it denial, send them a smile, but you won't let them see the killer. Even if they've seen it before. Even if they have killers in them, too.

And if you can't do it alone? If it's too much?

If protecting them means you die?

You'll still do it. You'll do it with a smile.

_...that's the reason I decided I would protect them 'til I die._

_That's the real reason._

x...x...x

**.owari.**


End file.
